The trailer park trash and social decadence that we export as "entertainment" offends many in more conservative societies. For Christ's sake, it offends me!
I've traveled many a mile through many a country and the picture of the US is not a flattering one.
Mr. Springer and his ilk, like it or not, are in many instances, who we are perceived as.
When Ralf Panitz appeared on the Jerry Springer Show - that addictively lurid televised chronicle of America's personal problems, in all their complex and infinitely depressing forms - he did not strike viewers as particularly out of the ordinary.
True, he had set up home again with his former wife without telling her that he had just been secretly married to a mistress she had not known about before their divorce. But this hardly counted as unusual on a show that, this week alone, has featured psychic strippers, wife-swapping transsexuals, and a row between a husband and wife over a stolen pig.
Hours after the episode entitled Secret Mistresses Confronted was aired, however, voyeuristic television appears to have metamorphosed into violent reality. Mr Panitz, 42, went on trial in Florida on Monday charged with murdering his ex-wife on the day of the broadcast, in a case which could see Mr Springer called as a witness.
Exactly. It's kind of like the alien's view of the "historical documents," in Galaxy Quest.
Several years ago a Pakistani missionary came to our church. His remarks were eye opening. To the Muslim world, the U.S. is viewed as a Christian nation. We're the Crusaders coming to take their land (they're taught that very early in life). So they see things like Springer and abortion and homosexuality and the rest of the crap coming out of Hollywood and they think "This is America. This is the Great Satan."
And it's not like they have the benefit of unbiased media commentators like Rather, Brokaw and Jennings...